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On February 1, 2023, Formula 1 fans were left stunned when Lewis Hamilton announced his plan to join Ferrari. While both Hamilton and Mercedes boss Toto Wolff have explained how the decision unfolded, the inner workings of the team remain mostly a mystery. Matt Whyman, who spent 18 months embedded within Mercedes, offers rare insight into the aftermath of Hamilton’s bombshell announcement for his book Inside Mercedes F1.
Whyman recalls the tense moment when the news broke. “Soon after the announcement was the shakedown for the W15 at Silverstone. That was the first chance that pretty much the whole team got to see Lewis. It was a strange atmosphere for about 30 seconds, but as soon as he got in the car, it was business as usual.” The team quickly adapted, and most understood Hamilton's reasoning. "People came to terms with it and I think people understood his reasons, which are very simple, really," he told Mirror Sport.
Hamilton, who had built a career and legacy at Mercedes, was open with Whyman about his decision. “I asked him directly what was going on,” Whyman said.
Hamilton explained, "It is every kid's dream who gets involved in motor racing to race a Ferrari, and that is it - I did not want to get to the end of my career and look back and go, what if?" Hamilton also mentioned that he has a clear vision of his career’s end. “He said it’s really meaningful to him, the fact that he has won all these races with Mercedes and he has been on this journey. The one thing he had not done and he just thought, ‘I do not want to walk away and go, I wish I had done that.’”
In his book, Whyman describes how Hamilton found the conversation with long-time boss Toto Wolff about leaving Mercedes to be the “hardest meeting” of his career. But the hardest part was telling his close friends within the team, especially his race engineer, Peter "Bono" Bonnington. Whyman recalls Hamilton sharing a deeply human moment: “His team mean a great deal to him - all his engineers, Bono, all the team, they mean such a lot to him. Every year he takes them paintballing, just a pre-season bonding experience, and it was all set up to go so he had to go to the paintballing.”
Hamilton’s reluctance to face his colleagues was palpable. Whyman remembers him saying,
“He said to me that he arrived and he saw them all waiting to go in. He said he could not get out of the car for 20 minutes. He was just so struck with, ‘What am I going to say to them after all of this time?’” Hamilton’s deep care for his colleagues was clear. “I don’t think this was a robotic decision,” Whyman added. “I know Lewis can come across as very focused and it is a focused decision, but he is a human being, he knows that it has repercussions and on a friendship level, that was the thing that he cared about most of all.”
Ultimately, Whyman believes that everyone understood Hamilton’s reasoning. “It’s Ferrari, and this is a guy who has done everything – that’s the one thing he has not done,” Whyman said.
